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UN names members of international inquiry into Khashoggi murder

UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard will be accompanied to Turkey by Helena Kennedy and Duarte Nuno Vieira.
The United Nations human rights office has said that a team of
international experts would conduct an inquiry into the murder of Saudi
journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions told Reuters news agency on Thursday she will
travel to Turkey next week to head an "independent international
inquiry" into Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on
October 2.

Callamard, a French academic and director of the Columbia Global Freedom
of Expression initiative at Columbia University in New York, reports to
the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and has a global mandate to
investigate executions.

In a statement, the UN human rights office said that Callamard would be
accompanied by Helena Kennedy and Duarte Nuno Vieira on the visit to
Turkey from January 28 to February 3.

Kennedy is one of the United Kingdom's most established lawyers and a Member of the House of Lords.

Nuno Vieira is a professor at the faculty of medicine of the University
of Coimbra in Portugal and an expert in pathology and forensic science.

He also serves as president of the Ibero-American Network of Forensic
Medicine and Forensic Science Institutions and as vice president of the
European Confederation of Experts on Evaluation and Repair of Bodily
Injury.

Last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he does not have
the authority to decide himself to launch an investigation into the
death of Khashoggi and no country had submitted an official request to
launch a criminal investigation.

Saudi Arabia insists that the death of Khashoggi, a Saudi national and
vocal critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was a "rogue
operation" carried out without the latter's knowledge and has put 11
defendants on trial for the crime, including five who the Saudi
prosecution is seeking the death penalty for.

But the international community has questioned the credibility of
Riyadh's investigation and some have speculated that those indicted are
such high-level figures that they must have been working on the orders
of Prince Mohammed.